Bolitho licked his lips; they were dry, not merely from salt air.

“Lay a course to the anchorage, Mr Partridge. I am going to pay my respects to the admiral.”

Partridge stared at him and then touched his battered hat. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Below the poop it was cool and dark after the quarterdeck, and as he strode aft towards the companion which led to the admiral’s day cabin Bolitho was still pondering over what might lie in store for him and his command.

As he ran lightly down the companion to the middle deck and past two small ship’s boys who were busily polishing brass hinges on some of the cabin doors, he recalled with sudden clarity how mixed his feelings had once been about assuming command of the Euryalus. It was common enough to take prize ships and put them to work against their old masters, it was more common still to let them keep their original names. Sailors often said it was bad luck to change a ship’s title, but then seafaring people said a lot of things more from habit than known fact.

She had once been named Tornade, flagship of the French

admiral Lequiller who had broken the British blockade to cross the Atlantic as far west as the Caribbean, there to cause havoc and destruction until finally run to earth by an inferior British squadron in the Bay of Biscay. She had struck her colours to Bolitho’s own ship, the old Hyperion, but not before she had pounded the worn two-decker almost into a floating wreck.

The Lords of the Admiralty had decided to rename Bolitho’s great prize, mostly it seemed because Lequiller had outwitted them on more than one occasion. It was strange, Bolitho had thought, that those who controlled His Majesty’s Navy from the heights of Admiralty seemed to know so little of ships and men that such changes were thought necessary.